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MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 12: A U.S. Border Patrol agent takes a group of Central American asylum seekers into custody on June 12, 2018 near McAllen, Texas. The immigrant families were then sent to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing center for possible separation. U.S. border authorities are executing the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants’ country of origin would no longer qualify them for political-asylum status. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

An immigration advocacy organization that received more than $20 million from a Silicon Valley couple’s Facebook fund-drive has declined a $250,000 donation — the largest corporate donation it’s ever been offered — from San Francisco-based Salesforce because of its ongoing contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the group announced Thursday.

The Texas nonprofit RAICES, at the forefront of the family separation debate, told Saleforce administrators it wouldn’t accept the company’s donation because it refuses to cut ties with CBP, the Department of Homeland Security agency that patrols the border.

“Your software provides an operational backbone for the agency, and thus does directly support CBP in implementing its inhumane and immoral policies,” the group said in a letter to Salesforce. “There is no way around this, and there is no room for hair splitting when children are being brutally torn away from parents, when a mother attempts suicide in an effort to get her children released, and when an 18 month old baby is separated from their mother in detention.”

Salesforce has contended its work with Customs and Border Protection isn’t associated at all with the thousands of family separations that have captured the nation.

“CBP is a customer & follows our (terms of service),” Tweeted CEO Marc Benioff earlier this month. “We don’t have an agreement with ICE. I’m proud of the men & women who protect & serve our country every day & I’m proud of our Ohana.”

Salesforce always will be true to our core values. We dont work with CBP regarding separation of families. CBP is a customer & follows our TOS. We dont have an agreement with ICE. I’m Proud of the Men & Women who protect & serve our country every day & I’m Proud of our Ohana.

Salesforce has spoken out against the separation of thousands of parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border under President’s Trump immigration policies and pledged to donate $1 million to organizations assisting families affected by those policies, $250,000 of which was offered to RAICES.

It’s the latest tech company to come under fire in recent months over its cooperation with federal immigration agencies. A group of Amazon employees in June pressured the company to stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement and stop contracting with companies who work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Salesforce has spoken out against the separation of families and donated toward reuniting these families, “that is not enough,” the letter said. “As long as Salesforce keeps its contracts with Customs and Border Protection, they are still enabling the agency to violate human rights.”

RAICES, founded in south Texas in 1986, immediately became the center of the family separation issue when news of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy exploded several weeks ago. It has offices in Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, according to its website.

In June, Charlotte and Dave Willner, some of Facebook’s earliest employees who are now at Pinterest and AirBnB, started a Facebook campaign to raise money for RAICES with a goal of $1,500 — enough to post bond for one immigrant parent who crossed the border illegally.

But the post quickly went viral, and in just a few days more than 360,000 people had donated nearly $14 million toward their cause, making it the largest single campaign on the relatively new Facebook Fundraisers. As of Wednesday afternoon, the couple had raised an estimated $20.7 million for the thousands of family reunifications that are underway across the country.

Tatiana Sanchez covers race, demographics and immigration for the Bay Area News Group. She got her start in journalism in the California desert, where she covered the marginalized immigrant communities of the eastern Coachella Valley. Before heading north, Sanchez spent a year as immigration reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune, where she covered the region's multicultural communities, social justice topics and life on the U.S. -Mexico border. A Bay Area native, she received a master's in journalism from Columbia University. In 2017, Sanchez was part of a team of East Bay Times reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. She's based in San Jose.

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